Kent and Sussex 1940: Britain's Front Line

BATTLEFIELD BRITAIN

KENT AND

SUSSEX 1940

BRITAIN’S FRONT LINE

Air raid practice (see p. 130).

BATTLEFIELD BRITAIN

KENT AND

SUSSEX 1940

BRITAIN’S FRONT LINE

STUART HYLTON

Pen & Sword

MILITARY

To Leigh and Pat Herington

my good friends and genial hosts during the research for this book

First published in Great Britain in 2004

and reprinted in 2013 by

PEN & SWORD MILITARY

An imprint of

Pen & Sword Books Ltd

47 Church Street

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Copyright © Stuart Hylton, 2004, 2013

ISBN: 1 84415 084 4

The right of the Stuart Hylton to be identified as Author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

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Contents

Introduction and Acknowledgements

Bibliography

Index

Assembling an Anderson air raid shelter – a familiar process during the early months of the war.

Rescue workers practise evacuating an air raid casualty.

Introduction and Acknowledgements

Some local history is much more than local in its significance. A couple of years ago, when I wrote a history of the city of Manchester, I soon came to realise that the local events I was describing were ones that set a course for the nation and, in some cases, the whole British Empire, over a century or more. Something similar is true of the events that took place in, around and over Kent and Sussex in 1940. Had those events taken a different turn, the subsequent story of Europe and the entire free world could have been very different.

In 1940, Kent and Sussex were at the centre of the world’s attention. The apparently invincible Nazi war machine had swept across continental Europe, and most of the world – including most people in Britain and Germany – expected southern England to be the next to face the onslaught. As we now know, Kent and Sussex would have borne the brunt of that invasion, had it come.

Following the evacuation from Dunkirk, the British authorities attempted to rebuild their shattered armed forces and to prepare the south-east corner of the country as a battlefield. As they were doing so, the Germans began to devote the vast resources of the Reich to their invasion plans. If, as some suggest, it was all a bluff, there was never such a gigantic and elaborate bluff in all the history of warfare. At the same time, the tens of thousands of people living in Kent and Sussex were struggling to continue something resembling a normal life in their communities.

What I have tried to do in this book is to take a slice through a piece of history, looking both at the leading world players and their grand strategies and at the attempts of ordinary people to make sense of the extraordinary events through which they were living. It is not intended to be a conventional account of the events of the war. I have tried to give that big picture in just enough detail to make sense of what was happening in the local community, but no more.

Equally, I have not tried to do the job of a conventional local history, in terms for example of detailing who was bombed when, or to give the story of individual Home Guard units. Kent and Sussex are very fortunate in the rich variety of their coverage by local historians. There are many good books that will provide far more local detail than there is space for in my volume, and many of these are listed in my bibliography. I hope that my efforts will encourage those of you who are not familiar with them to investigate them further. If I achieve anything through this book, I hope it is to give a flavour of what it was like to live through these times. Often it is the minutiae of life that best give this flavour, as people try to adapt everyday life to fit around the sweep of world events.

Then, as now, local newspapers laid a fascinating finger on the pulse of the local community. I have drawn heavily upon them, both for the local stories they tell and for the advertisements that bring the period so vividly to life. The Second World War photographs, with one exception, are reproduced by the kind permission of the Kent Messenger Group of newspapers from their splendid collection. I am grateful to Simon Irwin and his colleagues for their help in this. Some of the wartime railway scenes in the Messenger collection were originally photographed by the Southern Railway Company. The frontispiece of the railway gun being fired came from Dover Library, part of Kent County Council. I have tried to track down the copyright holders for all the images used in the book, in one or two cases without success, but have tried to ensure that these are at least duly acknowledged. If there are any failings in this respect and the copyright holders would care to draw them to my attention via the publisher, I will try to ensure that they are remedied in any future edition.

Chapter One

‘Tonbridge is largely normal’

(a headline in the Kent and Sussex Courier, 1 September 1939)

Yesterday everyone went quietly about their business without any dread of possible alarm…l Everywhere one came across optimistic people displaying a calm characteristic of the Britisher. Kent and Sussex Courier, 25 August 1939

The summer of 1939 was drawing to a close. August turned to September and, on the face of it, the tranquil pattern of English life was continuing uninterrupted. The holiday season was in full swing and the seaside resorts were packed with people enjoying the sunshine. Business, hit by bad weather in the early summer, was at last booming:

Outfitters, who have perhaps been the hardest hit of all tradesmen, are now doing a splendid trade in light summer dresses, bathing costumes and sportswear… If the weather continues to hold good for several weeks, we expect to recover from the effects of the trade depression. Kent Messenger, 26 August 1939

The Mayor of Ramsgate was full of confidence for the future:

On our shores today you could not find a happier crowd… I feel that in a year or two Ramsgate will be the leading resort of the country. Kent Messenger, 26 August 1939

Messrs P and A Campbell were offering pleasure sailings from the piers at Brighton and Hastings (weather and circumstances permitting). The Southern Railway was running ‘Cheap trips to the Continent from Folkestone and Dover: Boulogne from 10 shillings. Passports are not required by British subjects.’ For the more adventurous traveller, the Continental Express Company could provide excursions to a range of continental locations, including Germany. Going to the extremes of adventurousness, two men arrived in Kent with an 18-foot collapsible canoe, announcing their intention to paddle to Australia. The next week they were planning to cross to France, making their way to the Mediterranean via the inland waterways of continental Europe. It was a bad week to start out. They got as far as Sheerness before their canoe drifted away from them and they had to be taken to Leigh-on-Sea to retrieve it.

At home, Alan Russell and his Laughter Unlimited show at the Hastings Pier Theatre was sending the audiences home with aching ribs. This ‘sparkling and happy programme’ featured Charlie, the popular naughty boy of the show. ‘His clever fooling never fails to reduce one to almost helpless laughter,’ the Hastings Observer promised. The cinemas were showing Shirley Temple in The Little Princess. ‘The laughter, the tears, the drama, the tenderness of this great story are impressively presented,’ the Sussex Daily News told its readers. In Folkestone, the entertainment was live, as the town prepared to welcome Bertram Mills’s Circus, whose big top held 4,000 people and was the largest in Britain. ‘Some idea of the magnitude of the show may be gathered by the fact that three special trains are used to convey the circus and menagerie from town to town/said the Dover Express and East Kent News. It was due to open on 4 September. Live entertainment was also on offer at the Royal Hippodrome, Chatham, where the Gordon Ray Young Ladies promised ‘a treat for the tired businessman’. Those not wishing to be over-excited might have preferred the Linton Women’s Institute, where ‘Miss Anderson gave a very interesting talk on The comfort of the feet, with several useful hints on corns and rheumatism.’ Employers were still advertising for staff. A ‘smart intelligent boy’ was wanted as a chocolate seller (salary 10 shillings – 50p today – a week, plus commission). At the more genteel end of the jobs market a ‘gentlewoman of mature years (over forty) desirous of augmenting income, is offered congenial employment with permanent income.’ If you were neither smart, intelligent nor genteel, there was always ‘Lad wanted; able to ride cycle. Early riser and willing’ or ‘Wanted: strong girl as general.’ (This latter was a general domestic servant, not fast-track promotion in the armed forces). Those wanting a military career could join the Royal Air Force:

An example of wartime humour – has our taste in matters comic changed so dramatically since the 1940s?

Learn a trade in the RAF. Vacancies for unskilled men of good education to train as wireless operators, armourers and instrument repairers… All jobs well paid and with liberal annual leave.

Journeys to work in Brighton would have to be made without the aid of the town’s trams, which were being replaced by trolley buses and something called ‘heavy-oil-engine buses’. Enthusiasts could buy their very own Brighton tram for the bargain price of £5 (buyer collects, and you could not use the Corporation’s tram tracks to get it home).

Small boys were doing what small boys have done since time immemorial. Three of them were summoned to appear at Hastings Police Court, where they were fined 5 shillings apiece for damaging the wall of the Borough Sanatorium in the process of scrumping apples.

At the county cricket ground in Hove, Sussex were being trounced by the champions, Yorkshire. Hutton and Yardley scored centuries for the visitors and Verity took 7 for 9 as Sussex were skittled out for 33 in their second innings. But Sussex supporters seeking solace in the tea tent would have noticed that something was amiss:

The order for the evacuation of London children and their reception at Brighton, Hove and elsewhere robbed the tea tent on the county cricket ground at Hove yesterday of a good number of its working personnel…

Over 30% of the waitresses in all sections were unable to help owing to the prior demand of ‘voluntary service’ and one section, run by Lady Wishart and presided over yesterday by her daughter, Mrs Tessier, was deprived of every one of its personnel for this reason. Sussex Daily News, 1 September 1939

Germany had invaded Poland and war was days away. The British authorities were carrying out plans to evacuate some 3.5 million civilians (mostly women and children) from the major cities and other danger areas to what were designated ‘safe areas’. Extraordinarily, as it now seems, the coastal towns directly facing continental Europe were considered safe and preparations were made for them to receive thousands of evacuees from London. At the same time, children living along the Thames Estuary were themselves to be evacuated. Some of the children from Chatham, Rochester, Gillingham, Northfleet and Gravesend were being taken by pleasure steamer to ports in Suffolk and Norfolk and distributed inland from there. Others would go by train to destinations unknown. Parents were told to write their child’s name on a strong piece of paper and sew it into their clothes. The authorities promised ‘every child will be labelled and will carry a postcard to send home on arrival at their evacuation places.’ With them went their schoolteachers and, for the younger children, their mothers, thereby creating some of the first tragic victims of the war. The Kent Messenger christened these ‘the washupees’. They were the helpless (some would say hopeless) husbands who suddenly found themselves deprived of their wife’s domestic ministrations. The paper reported that:

In the Medway towns there are crowds of grass widowers who are piling up unwashed crocks and bundles of soiled linen, relying with pathetic faith on tin openers and realising as never before what jewels of wives they had. A Chatham man spoke for them all. ‘When you have been used to relying on a woman, you’re lost when she goes away. There are 75 per cent of us in the same position around here.’ Kent Messenger, 16 September 1939

He was down to his last two clean shirts and the privations of wartime were already starting to look overwhelming. Everywhere, there were the first small signs of the dramatic changes that were to overtake the people of Kent and Sussex. The Mayor of Dover was advising his citizens that the number of street lamps was to be reduced and arrangements made for the rest to be extinguished at short notice. He also recommended that householders should acquire a store of non-perishable foods. (The storing of more than a week’s supply of food would later cease to be prudent housekeeping and would become hoarding, an offence under the Defence of the Realm Regulations punishable by a fine and confiscation). After appealing for volunteers to form Rescue, Repair and Decontamination Squads, and giving out the locations of air-raid shelters, the Mayor continued: ‘I appeal to everyone to remain calm. The Council and their officers have everything well in hand and are prepared for any emergency.’

But business knew better. Large advertisements for Aspro advised: ‘Don’t let these trying times upset you. You can depend on Aspro to calm your nerves.’ Products as diverse as Guinness and Wrigley’s chewing gum advertised their soothing qualities in a crisis:

During the early stages of the war, schoolchildren would often wear their gas masks in class for a few minutes each day, as a means of acclimatisation.

Wrigley’s chewing gum ‘steadies your nerves.’ In times of stress, Wrigley’s gum quiets your nerves, soothes your throat and keeps you mentally alert. It also aids digestion, apt to be impaired under strain.

Other businesses were quick to seize new commercial opportunities. Ironmongers started to turn out incendiary-bomb scoops and rakes (7s 6d the pair) or paraffin stoves for your air-raid shelter (15s 9d). Tapley’s Motors would equip your car with headlamp shields and all the other modifications needed to comply with the new Motor Car Lighting Regulations. Brooker’s the opticians could supply special gas-mask sides for your spectacles. Builders offered to gasproof any room in your house, and for the status-obsessed, there was even the opportunity to go one-up on your neighbours by having Overington’s (the concrete specialists) build you a bespoke air-raid shelter to your own specifications. But the ultimate in status was surely the Bruce air-raid shelter. After the war, you could simply remove its roof and use it as a swimming pool. The Kent Messenger even ran an advertising feature for all these new domestic essentials. Those traders with no new wartime lines to sell simply appealed to the patriotic instinct for panic-buying:

Keep the flag flying!… The life of the nation must go on. During the war 1914–18 many goods were practically unobtainable and prices soared to quite three times the price we are offering our goods today. We strongly advise you to come and buy TODAY… Supplies of many articles have already been entirely cut off in order to supply the forces.